In teaching Full Value it is important to begin by knowing your audience. The ability to understand, integrate and practice a moral and ethical framework is different for a young child than for an adult. This is actually as it should be! Knowing your audience is also essential to activity selection and processing the experience. Educators and counselors who use Full Value as a component of their approach with clients are naturally sensitive to developmental differences. This discussion will not necessarily break new ground, but rather be an integration of representative models of Full Value that have been presented by a variety of authors.
Primary Age Children (3 – 7)
In Adventure Play (MacPhee-Bower, 1998) Nancy understands that the capacities of very young children preclude them from at least initially generating a list of core values and distracters. She provides them with a short but powerful set of principles; Be Gentle; Be Kind; Be Safe. Be Gentle and Be Safe are somewhat synonymous concepts, although Be Gentle has more to do with generically treating classmates with care when engaged in physical activities, while Be Safe is concerned with following the rules of the game. Be Kind moves students into consideration of the affective wellbeing of others. It asks kids to consider using “kind words” with each other, as opposed to the increasingly negative interactions that occur during structured and unstructured play. As Nancy remarks, “Be Kind is about taking care of another’s feelings and emotions and requires some communication skills to bring it to life.”
Used to working with older students, I remember trying to process Harper’s Ferry (a giant teeter-totter platform that is kept in balance using the weight of participants). After circling up the kids I started firing off those tried and true processing questions that worked so well with adolescents. The feedback I received were blank stares punctuated by statements like, “I had fun” and “it was good.” The principal of the school wandered by and saw my desperate situation. She engaged with the students in a very different and appropriately concrete manner. A wealth of valuable conversation resulted.
When entering the Decision Tree using these three deceptively simple statements helps to set expectations around activity outcomes. They help to focus on a level of communication that allows for clear connections to students’ linguistic and conceptual reasoning abilities. The statements also allow for students to contribute to the conversation, as opposed to talking at them. Meeting students at their level is essential to the success of the process.
Elementary Age Children (8-10)
In The Caring Classroom (Frank, 2001) Laurie provides a set of ground rules for play initially developed by the New Games Foundation including Play Hard, Play Safe, Play Fair, and Have Fun. They are also discussed at some length by Mary Henton in Adventure in the Classroom (Henton, 1996). Play Hard really speaks to commitment to the task, not playing with reckless abandon and a disregard for the safety of others. It means do it like you care; like you mean it. It is most closely related to the concept, Be Here, which is a pillar of Full Value for somewhat older populations. Mary defines Play Safe as “a reminder that physical and emotional safety forms the boundary within which all activity occurs (page 73).” This seems most closely aligned to the Full Value of Be Safe. In connecting this to the world of play, the concepts become more meaningful and understandable to younger children, who learn most everything social in nature from structured and unstructured play. Play Fair, according to Mary “asks everyone to be open to each other’s ideas and suggestions.” A more cognitive approach to this is the of the Full Value concept of Be Honest.
In Project Adventure’s Adventure Curriculum for Middle Schools (Panicucci, 2003), Jane Panicucci offers a helpful chart (page 9) that represents full value concepts across school grade levels. She also sees the New Games formulation of Play Hard, Play Fair, and Play Safe as being most connected to the elementary school age population. At the upper range of the elementary age group the richness of Full Value can begin to be brought into play. Aside from her discussion of Play Hard, Play Safe, and Play Fair, which is targeted for a broad range of student populations, Mary Henton also discusses the entire spectrum of Full Value, for as students reach the ages of ten and eleven they are more able to think outside their own experience, to have empathy for others. They are also more able to hear and process feedback about acceptable and unacceptable behavior. This is not to say the younger children cannot experience caring for others, but it is at a much more intuitive level, not as easily accessible via a more cognitive/reflective process.
Middle School (11-13)
The Full Breath of Full Value can be explored with this age group. This would include Be Here, Be Safe, Set Goals, Be Honest, Caring for Self and Others, and Let Go and Move On (Schoel and Maizell, 2002). Late latency age children and early adolescents are ready to think conceptually, can co-create, and begin to learn from metaphorical experiences. What is critical to keep in mind with all of these concepts is the readiness factor of participants. For while a child may be of a chronological age to understand them, there may be other factors that make fully engaging with Full Value quite difficult. This becomes a process of meeting the person where they are, an approach that fits for any age and any group.
For example, when running a group you may have the expectation that all of the clients come on time and participate in a positive way. But for a child who comes from a family where abandonment and lack of caring and commitment is commonplace, just showing up at all should be considered a victory. So in this instance Be Here may not mean tuning in, participating, attending to self and others, but in a relative and very real sense, the student who typically comes to nothing has come to your group. His attendance should be recognized and affirmed.
High School and Adulthood
Full Value, as discussed in Exploring Islands of Healing, can be utilized with all age groups, depending on its presentation. With high school age and adult populations the true conceptual richness of the process can come alive. Again, it is important to stress that we need to meet our clients at the door and accept the place they are in, not where we wish them to be. This acceptance of place should drive all of our decisions around facilitating group and individual goals, as well as creating and implementing Full Value agreements. Jane Pannicci, in her High School physical education text (Panicucci, 2003), provides a list of related, yet somewhat different Full Value components (page 9) including Be Present, Pay Attention, Speak Your Truth, Be Open to Outcomes, and Create a Safe Environment. A side by side comparison of this high school model and the work within Exploring Islands of Healing would look like this:
Full Value (Schoel and Maizell)
Full Value (Panicucci)
Be Here
Be Present
Be Safe
Pay Attention; Create a Safe Environment
Set Goals
Be Honest
Speak Your Truth
Let Go and Move On
Be Open to Outcomes
Caring for Self and Others
Key Points
While the formulation and presentation of Full Value differs across age groups and, yes, authors, a common thread runs through all of the various perambulations. The intention is to develop and practice rules of operation that will allow groups to survive and ultimately thrive. While groups may have many purposes, they must have rules of operation; rules that serve as boundaries to encourage the building and maintaining of an environment that promotes growth.
It is fascinating to experience the development of Full Value contracts among groups of all ages, ethic backgrounds, and social classes. The core values that Kindergarteners or adults in recovery give voice to are mostly the same, a reflection of the archetypes that seem to move through us all. The frequency and commonality of words that represent trust, caring, honesty, love, communication, and forgiveness is stunning. All of us seem to thirst for these qualities in our lives. The many authors who have talked about Full Value are offering you tools to assist in presenting this most powerful concept to “children of all ages.”
Exploring Full Value
In teaching Full Value it is important to begin by knowing your audience. The ability to understand, integrate and practice a moral and ethical framework is different for a young child than for an adult. This is actually as it should be! Knowing your audience is also essential to activity selection and processing the experience. Educators and counselors who use Full Value as a component of their approach with clients are naturally sensitive to developmental differences. This discussion will not necessarily break new ground, but rather be an integration of representative models of Full Value that have been presented by a variety of authors.
Primary Age Children (3 – 7)
In Adventure Play (MacPhee-Bower, 1998) Nancy understands that the capacities of very young children preclude them from at least initially generating a list of core values and distracters. She provides them with a short but powerful set of principles; Be Gentle; Be Kind; Be Safe. Be Gentle and Be Safe are somewhat synonymous concepts, although Be Gentle has more to do with generically treating classmates with care when engaged in physical activities, while Be Safe is concerned with following the rules of the game. Be Kind moves students into consideration of the affective wellbeing of others. It asks kids to consider using “kind words” with each other, as opposed to the increasingly negative interactions that occur during structured and unstructured play. As Nancy remarks, “Be Kind is about taking care of another’s feelings and emotions and requires some communication skills to bring it to life.”
Used to working with older students, I remember trying to process Harper’s Ferry (a giant teeter-totter platform that is kept in balance using the weight of participants). After circling up the kids I started firing off those tried and true processing questions that worked so well with adolescents. The feedback I received were blank stares punctuated by statements like, “I had fun” and “it was good.” The principal of the school wandered by and saw my desperate situation. She engaged with the students in a very different and appropriately concrete manner. A wealth of valuable conversation resulted.
When entering the Decision Tree using these three deceptively simple statements helps to set expectations around activity outcomes. They help to focus on a level of communication that allows for clear connections to students’ linguistic and conceptual reasoning abilities. The statements also allow for students to contribute to the conversation, as opposed to talking at them. Meeting students at their level is essential to the success of the process.
Elementary Age Children (8-10)
In The Caring Classroom (Frank, 2001) Laurie provides a set of ground rules for play initially developed by the New Games Foundation including Play Hard, Play Safe, Play Fair, and Have Fun. They are also discussed at some length by Mary Henton in Adventure in the Classroom (Henton, 1996). Play Hard really speaks to commitment to the task, not playing with reckless abandon and a disregard for the safety of others. It means do it like you care; like you mean it. It is most closely related to the concept, Be Here, which is a pillar of Full Value for somewhat older populations. Mary defines Play Safe as “a reminder that physical and emotional safety forms the boundary within which all activity occurs (page 73).” This seems most closely aligned to the Full Value of Be Safe. In connecting this to the world of play, the concepts become more meaningful and understandable to younger children, who learn most everything social in nature from structured and unstructured play. Play Fair, according to Mary “asks everyone to be open to each other’s ideas and suggestions.” A more cognitive approach to this is the of the Full Value concept of Be Honest.
In Project Adventure’s Adventure Curriculum for Middle Schools (Panicucci, 2003), Jane Panicucci offers a helpful chart (page 9) that represents full value concepts across school grade levels. She also sees the New Games formulation of Play Hard, Play Fair, and Play Safe as being most connected to the elementary school age population. At the upper range of the elementary age group the richness of Full Value can begin to be brought into play. Aside from her discussion of Play Hard, Play Safe, and Play Fair, which is targeted for a broad range of student populations, Mary Henton also discusses the entire spectrum of Full Value, for as students reach the ages of ten and eleven they are more able to think outside their own experience, to have empathy for others. They are also more able to hear and process feedback about acceptable and unacceptable behavior. This is not to say the younger children cannot experience caring for others, but it is at a much more intuitive level, not as easily accessible via a more cognitive/reflective process.
Middle School (11-13)
The Full Breath of Full Value can be explored with this age group. This would include Be Here, Be Safe, Set Goals, Be Honest, Caring for Self and Others, and Let Go and Move On (Schoel and Maizell, 2002). Late latency age children and early adolescents are ready to think conceptually, can co-create, and begin to learn from metaphorical experiences. What is critical to keep in mind with all of these concepts is the readiness factor of participants. For while a child may be of a chronological age to understand them, there may be other factors that make fully engaging with Full Value quite difficult. This becomes a process of meeting the person where they are, an approach that fits for any age and any group.
For example, when running a group you may have the expectation that all of the clients come on time and participate in a positive way. But for a child who comes from a family where abandonment and lack of caring and commitment is commonplace, just showing up at all should be considered a victory. So in this instance Be Here may not mean tuning in, participating, attending to self and others, but in a relative and very real sense, the student who typically comes to nothing has come to your group. His attendance should be recognized and affirmed.
High School and Adulthood
Full Value, as discussed in Exploring Islands of Healing, can be utilized with all age groups, depending on its presentation. With high school age and adult populations the true conceptual richness of the process can come alive. Again, it is important to stress that we need to meet our clients at the door and accept the place they are in, not where we wish them to be. This acceptance of place should drive all of our decisions around facilitating group and individual goals, as well as creating and implementing Full Value agreements. Jane Pannicci, in her High School physical education text (Panicucci, 2003), provides a list of related, yet somewhat different Full Value components (page 9) including Be Present, Pay Attention, Speak Your Truth, Be Open to Outcomes, and Create a Safe Environment. A side by side comparison of this high school model and the work within Exploring Islands of Healing would look like this:
Key Points
While the formulation and presentation of Full Value differs across age groups and, yes, authors, a common thread runs through all of the various perambulations. The intention is to develop and practice rules of operation that will allow groups to survive and ultimately thrive. While groups may have many purposes, they must have rules of operation; rules that serve as boundaries to encourage the building and maintaining of an environment that promotes growth.
It is fascinating to experience the development of Full Value contracts among groups of all ages, ethic backgrounds, and social classes. The core values that Kindergarteners or adults in recovery give voice to are mostly the same, a reflection of the archetypes that seem to move through us all. The frequency and commonality of words that represent trust, caring, honesty, love, communication, and forgiveness is stunning. All of us seem to thirst for these qualities in our lives. The many authors who have talked about Full Value are offering you tools to assist in presenting this most powerful concept to “children of all ages.”